Dreaming in the space

Poetry in Orbit

It's all about the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk this week, marking the 40th anniversary. But while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin deserve their place in space history, they were two among many men (and women) who risked their lives to venture into the uncharted territory of space.

Case in point: Welsh poet Meirion Jordan pays tribute to the Russian cosmonauts in the epilogue of Moonrise, a lovely collection of poems with strong science themes (h/t: In the Dark):

I, Yuri Gagarin, having not seen God,
wake now to the scrollwork of a body,
to my own white fibres leafing into the bone:
know that beyond this dome of rain there is
only the nothing where the soul sweers
out its parallax like a distant star and truth
brightens to X, to gamma, through a metal sail.

So I return to you, cramming your pockets
with the atmosphere and the evening news,
fumbling for gardens in the moon’s shadow,
in its waterfalls of silence. I wish for you
familiar towns, their piers and amusement arcades
unpeopled at dusk, the unicorn tumbling by
on china hooves behind the high walls
of parks, among congregating lamps.

May you find Earth rising there, between
your steepled hands. May your voyages
end. May you have a cold unfurling
of limbs each morning, when I am fallen
out of the world.

Photo: Earthrise, taken on December 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders while in orbit around the moon. Source: NASA